Drunken driver gets 34 years to life in prison for killing 2 construction workers on 405 Freeway in Torrance

Yocio Jonathan Gomez, seated next to his attorney Bella Dilworth, was sentenced in Torrance Superior Court Friday July 11, 2014 to 34 years to life for killing freeway construction workers Raymond Lopez, 56, and Ricardo Zamora, 58, while driving drunk on the 405 freeway on July 22, 2012.
Robert Casillas / Staff Photographer

A drunken driver with two previous DUI convictions was sentenced Friday to 34 years to life in prison for plowing into and killing two construction workers on the 405 Freeway in Torrance, devastating their families.

Yocio Jonathan Gomez, whose blood-alcohol level was 0.21 — nearly three times the legal limit — said nothing during his sentencing hearing in Torrance Superior Court, where the judge and the relatives of his victims excoriated him for showing no remorse.

“Mr. Gomez, you are a young man who has committed one of the worst crimes I have ever seen,” Judge Steven Van Sicklen said as he sentenced the 25-year-old Norwalk resident. “You’ve been convicted twice before for driving under the influence. ... You got drunk. You got smashed. ... You were begged by almost everybody at that party not to get into your car.”

Gomez ignored them on July 22, 2012, and headed home in the wrong direction when he left a party in Maywood shortly after 3 a.m. Besides his DUI convictions, his driver’s license had been suspended and he had not participated in any anti-alcohol programs that judges ordered him to take.

Gomez’s Ford Explorer was traveling at 92 mph on the northbound 405 Freeway when he came upon a construction site near Artesia Boulevard in Torrance. He slammed without braking into the back of a Lexus whose driver had slowed to 47 mph while passing the traffic cones. The Lexus shot forward like a bullet, and spun out of control into the work site.

“The force of the impact to the Lexus was so great, it accelerated the Lexus speed 26 mph in two one-hundredths of a second,” Deputy District Attorney Christopher Hartman said. “It’s hard to imagine.”

Zamora’s brother, Pete, was the foreman on the project and stationed about a quarter-mile away. He received a frantic call and raced along the freeway to find his brother and Lopez were dead.

“Pulling up and seeing all the lights, and your brother is upside-down trapped in the machine with his legs going in directions they shouldn’t be,” Pete Zamora said in an interview. “It was a lot of blood. ... I don’t get much sleep anymore. I wish I could get it out of my head but I can’t.”

Pete Zamora’s son, Michael Zamora, also was working the site and witnessed the carnage first-hand.

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Gomez’s previous convictions made him eligible for murder charges. In April, jurors convicted Gomez of two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter, and other DUI charges.

In court Friday, family members of both men described the devastating night they were awakened from sleep to be told of the grisly event. One by one, seven family members described the pain they suffered, what Gomez had cost them, and told of the wonderful men who were lost.

“It makes me enormously proud knowing that we had a great man in our lives, who showed us every day how hard you should work for your family,” said Lopez’s daughter, Maureen Lopez. “The love that he had for us was infinite. The strength that he showed us was heroic.”

Lopez, whose wife died six years ago from illness, worked the construction job that night even though he had retired from regular employment.

“Now I may not have my father to walk me down the aisle, or be able to have my children experience even one of their grandparents’ love, but I luckily will always have the strength that my parents have left with me,” Maureen Lopez said. “The gift of their strength will allow me to get up every day to provide for my family, will show me how to lift my brother and sisters up when they feel like giving up, and will also give me strength to smile every day, knowing that I was lucky enough to have the greatest dad in the world.”

Zamora’s wife, Gloria, told the packed courtroom that half of her died with her husband that morning. The couple, married for 40 years, has two daughters and three grandsons whom her husband adored.

“Rick loved his family and everyone that would meet him just knew what kind of person he was,” she said. “He loved to make people laugh and he had the biggest smile. He loved the Lord with all his heart.”

Gloria Zamora and Zamora’s sister, Janet Ortiz, said Gomez never showed any remorse from the first day they saw him in court, when he smiled and blew kisses to his family.

“The guy just didn’t get it,” Ortiz said. “He just killed two people, injured a third, and destroyed the lives of two families.”

Following the hearing, Pete Zamora and Maureen Lopez said they were pleased that Van Sicklen sentenced Gomez to the maximum time allowed by law for driving under the influence and taking lives.

“If you’ve already been caught doing it once or twice, you think you would learn from it,” Pete Zamora said. “The life that you take, you are not just destroying that family, you are destroying your own family. That’s not worth it. Too many people get hurt by it.”